“Over 36% of holiday ad budget will be allocated to social media marketing for the businesses surveyed; additionally, 68% indicated some form of digital advertising was highest-priority, compared to 32% spending on traditional channels like TV print and radio.

“In the digital channel, 42% claimed Facebook would take the majority of spend, followed by Google at 28% and Instagram at 18%. October was found to be the most popular month to change advertising messaging at 28%, followed by November at 20% and September at 19%.”

While Reveal Mobile’s survey was of SMBs, the mobile audience insights platform provider says it expects the research findings to apply to large brands, as well.

Facebook Ads Contend With Google and Amazon for Marketing Budgets

The theme here is digital marketing, Reveal Mobile says. But Facebook Ads are so relevant to audiences because of hyper-targeting, that they’ll be 42% of holiday ad spend, the research shows.

“Given that Facebook owns Instagram, their combined take will earn them 59.4% of holiday digital ad spend from SMBs,” the report reads.

One aspect of the hyper-targeting with which Facebook continues to struggle, especially post-Cambridge Analytica, is the audience whittling abuse from some marketers. For instance, even as Facebook’s new ad policies aim to eliminate such possible targeting as sending Facebook ads to “Jew Haters,” the New York Times reported on Tuesday that some employers were able to exclude women from job ads, violating equal opportunity laws.

“The employers appear to have used Facebook’s targeting technology to exclude women from the users who received their advertisements, which highlighted openings for jobs like truck driver and window installer.”

Reveal Mobile finds Google will get 28% of Holiday 2018 dollars and Amazon 12%, with its audience planning to geotarget consumers as much as possible.

It’s 2018. Why Is Mobile Checkout Still a Problem?

It's surprising there are still marketers who haven’t optimized mobile for purchases. IBM found that was a specific complaint from consumers during Holiday 2014.

But in 2018, consumers seem to have found a way around that, and ad dollars are following suit.

Reveal Mobile’s research finds:

“One statistic that did surprise us is how little emphasis mobile advertising received in the survey; although there is a nuance to understand here. Much of the time that people spend on social media or hunting for search results is on a mobile device; which, therefore, results in mobile ads being delivered.”

Even with the frustration for consumers of some e-commerce sites having lousy mobile checkout options, figures from the National Retail Federation show online shopping is growing faster than overall holiday purchasing. Overall Holiday 2017 sales grew 5.5% to $692 billion, with $138 billion of that being e-commerce shopping. And that online shopping portion grew 11.5% YOY.